Gelsinger to the channel: “We’re pleased, but not satisfied”

VMware CEO Pat Gelsinger has pledged the vendor will continue to invest in and further evolve its programs for channel partners as new technologies and initiatives come to the market.

During VMworld 2019 the company revealed it was all-in on Kubernetes, along new additions to its Hybrid Cloud, and making VMware Cloud on Dell EMC available to the market. HPE is also bringing its pay-per-use managed service, GreenLake to VMware Cloud Foundation customers.

“We made a lot of progress since last year, but I want to commit to them in a powerful way that we’re going to continue to invest in refining the programs,” Gelsinger said in a post press briefing following his keynote address in San Francisco.

“We’ve got so much new products we’re bringing in organically and inorganically, and the only way we can realise that for our customers at scale, is through our channel partners.

“We’re pleased with the progress, and as Michael Dell has a saying ‘we’re pleased, but not satisfied’, and that’s how I want the channel to look at us: we’re pleased with the progress, but we’re not satisfied in anyway that we’re finished.”

This comes as VMware fully unveiled its Partner Connect program that is set to go live in February.

In the past year, the company has offered a teaser as to what the new program will entail, promising it was a "complete overhaul" as it aimed to simplify channel engagement.

The new-look strategy is designed to allow partners to engage with the software giant in a way aligned to specific business models, rather than a generic form of engagement.

With flexibility in mind, the new program will comprise of three tiers, spanning Partner, Advanced Partner and Principal Partner.

The program -- set to impact more than 75,000 partners worldwide -- also includes new master services competency, in addition to incentives around VMware Cloud on AWS and deeper ties with alliance vendors such as Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE).

The vendor expects all partners in the new program to “demonstrate basic capabilities” through the achievement of VMware Solution Competencies, which focus on developing partners’ selling skills, architecture proficiency and deployment expertise.

During his keynote address, Gelsinger said telcos would play a bigger role in the cloud universe than ever before.

“We’re also seeing there’s a massive wave occurring in the telco community where 5G is ushering in the biggest capital investment build out for the rest of our career,” he said. “Telcos will play a bigger role in the cloud universe than ever before, but they’re also changing their underlying infrastructure that was a hardware centric vertical silo, now it’s becoming a software layer among multiple generations of technology.

“The shift from hardware to software we believe is a great opportunity for US industry to step back in and play a critical role in 5G.”

Gelsinger also delved into the recent acquisitions of Pivotal and Carbon Black, outlining its aim to enable “any cloud environment where you can build, run, manage, connect and detect across that environment.”

He also touched on the use of technology for good and used bitcoin as an example in saying that bitcoin itself was bad, as 95 per cent of its uses are illicit and criminal, but the underlying technology is extremely powerful in regards to blockchain and DTL.

He highlighted it in the recently announced partnership with ASX and Digital Assets to bring DTL into the marketplace, "bringing engineering for good".

“It’s neither good nor bad, but it’s often how we shape it -- will technology shape the world we want to live in? Or will it create a world we’re afraid to live in? As technologists, we can’t afford to think of tech as someone’s problem to think through its implications,” he said.

Julia Talevski attended VMworld 2019 in San Francisco as a guest of VMware.

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